Johnny Cash And June Carter – Live Recordings From The Louisiana Hayride

In the wake of the deaths of Johnny and June Carter Cash, it’s inevitable that history examine and re-examine their lives and careers. To many new to the couple, their most recent, critically acclaimed work defines them.

In John’s case, it’s the Rick Rubin-produced American Recordings albums that continued despite his failing health. In June’s, it would be her two final albums, Press On and Wildwood Flower. Gripping, moving and heroic, those recordings merited the considerable acclaim they received. They serve as the final testaments of two uncommon individuals who gave their lives to their craft, whose indomitable spirits could not — indeed, would not — yield to the restraints and indignities of failing health.

Cash’s Sun material is available on numerous repackages. Sony Legacy generated an extensive series of Cash reissues for his 70th birthday in 2002. Bear Family reissued some of June’s Columbia material, as well as her duets with Cash. The rub: Will fans just discovering the couple get the entire picture, or will they appreciate them mainly through those poignant, autumnal recordings?

These two monaural collections of Cash and Carter airchecks, which were in preparation before their deaths, are a welcome remedy to such tunnel vision, reflecting the pre-marriage ’50s and ’60s Cash and Carter (separately and together) onstage at Shreveport’s legendary Louisiana Hayride. Called the Cradle of the Stars in its prime, the Hayride was, more accurately, the Grand Ole Opry’s farm club.

While annotator Paul Kingsbury overstates his case in declaring that Cash “may have the single most recognizable voice in American music” (Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Elvis, Dolly and Dylan partisans might dissent), this collection presents Cash making history, beginning with a 1955 Hayride performance of “Hey Porter” from about the time Sam Phillips released the Sun single.

It establishes that Cash had the ability to mesmerize a crowd over a decade before Columbia producer Bob Johnston turned the tapes on at Folsom Prison in 1967. Whether natural or (in the early ’60s) pill-inspired, Cash’s charismatic energy blasts through every performance here, enhanced by Luther Perkins’ electric guitar minimalism, bassist Marshall Grant’s animated string-slapping and, after 1958, Fluke Holland’s no-nonsense percussion.

These sixteen performances also dash any misconceptions that Cash was a true rockabilly or ever claimed to be. Though he had the ferocity and the style, he never veered into rock territory, even on “Hey Porter” or “Luther Played The Boogie”. Given the Sun material’s elemental nature and the Tennessee Two’s rudimentary accompaniment, differences in studio and live performances are often negligible. Nonetheless, a couple performances, most notably a 1962 “Big River”, has a relentless urgency rivaling the 1958 hit single.

It’s safe to say that many unaware of June’s career only learned of her comedic and acting experience by reading her obituary. Even in the pre-Cash years working with her mother Maybelle and her sisters Helen and Anita, June had her own recording career for RCA, Liberty and Columbia. Her vivacious comedic persona, loopier and edgier than Minnie Pearl’s, is sure to surprise those hearing it for the first time.

Applying her spunkiness to Chuck Berry’s “Thirty Days”, one of his most country numbers (aside from “Maybelline”), she integrates it into her routine. On Carter Family standards “Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow” and “Wildwood Flower”, she’s entertaining, if a bit ragged.

A guileless delivery of the gospel tune “When No One Stands Alone” suggests the more pious (if still zany) June of later years. She self-deprecatingly introduces her 1955 ballad “He Don’t Love Me Anymore” as “#2 on Columbia’s best seller list — from the bottom,” and it’s obvious why the single stiffed: The song was utterly unsuitable to her.

Two 1962 performances came just weeks after she and the Carters joined Cash’s show: a loony “John Henry” and “The Heel”. One of June’s solo novelties for Liberty, this comes off as a truly eccentric sample of white rap. The final tracks, from 1965, feature she and Cash together, an entirely fitting end to the collection. Having mastered Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” (their version was a hit single in ’64), they tackle “Ballad of A Teenage Queen” and, aided by the Statler Brothers, render one of Cash’s worst Sun efforts listenable.

Were John and June living, these performances would still be revelatory. With more Hayride reissues hopefully to come, they leave one anxious to hear what gems still await.